It’s often best to buy advanced versions of digital products in the long run. You are more likely to get better performance, saving you from the hassle of scaling your projects if needed. This is especially true when it comes to online security and privacy.
The stakes for online transactions are high, as a lot can go wrong. Proxies are one way to secure your online activities. Unlocking the highest potential of proxies requires you to look for the most trustworthy providers and the most advanced type. Socks5 proxies are the first option you should look into when unlocking the power of advanced proxies.
Two purposes of proxies
Proxies are commonly defined as intermediary servers (usually computers) that route your internet connection before it reaches the endpoint (usually a web server). You connect to the proxy server before connecting to the web. This serves two main purposes. First, websites and services will not have your original IP address available.
You will route your requests to the proxy server, and it will connect with its IP address. It is important for privacy because IP addresses, unique strings of numbers for each device online, are used to track visitors. Hiding your IP means that it is a lot more difficult for anyone online to track your activity.
But even without tracking measures, IP addresses give away personal information. They are tied to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), which allows anyone to check your approximate location. It’s fairly easy for anyone to check your IP address and know from where you are connecting. Websites use this data to impose geo-restrictions.
It is the second reason why you should change your IP address. By knowing your IP, a website can adjust some of its content or display an entirely different version. E-commerce shops use it to target certain locations with higher prices, streaming websites to restrict media content, social media platforms to target ads, and so on.
All major commercial websites have some sort of tracking and geo-restriction measures. But it might not only be done to increase profits. Governments are also known to restrict data and track people for political purposes.
What are advanced proxies?
No matter the reason you want to change your IP, proxies are the answer. Most proxy types can hide your IP address and help bypass geo-restrictions. The only exception is transparent proxies. They signal to the web server that they are rerouting the connection and sometimes even inform about the original IP address.
Such proxies can be beneficial in scenarios where you need some extra security and a bump in performance, but privacy isn’t an issue. However, often, web servers simply block connections from proxies for security reasons. That’s why all proxies we can call ‘advanced’ are anonymous proxies and hide your IP address without telling the endpoint it is doing so.
An advanced proxy is also one that performs efficiently for this task. Without going into specific use cases, we can safely say that such are private proxies. Dedicated to one user, these proxies have fewer downtimes, performance drops, or IP bans compared to shared ones.
It’s simply because you can never be sure what other users are doing with proxies and whether you are getting the better part of the server load. Shared proxies are much cheaper in comparison, but if you want advanced proxy technology, you must choose private proxies.
Such an advanced proxy approach can be applied to any of the three main types of proxies – residential, datacenter, or mobile. The exact choice depends on your use case.
- Residential proxies have IPs verified by an ISP and are the best choice for privacy-focused tasks.
- Datacenter proxies are created virtually with high-tech equipment, so they are best for tasks requiring the best performance.
- Mobile proxies use devices (smartphones or tablets) that connect through mobile internet, which is best if you need this specific connection type.
While it’s difficult to generalize which type is best without a use case, residential proxies are the default choice of most users. They are least likely to be blocked, even if they might be a bit slower than datacenter proxies.
So, if you don’t know which proxy type to choose, going with residential proxies is most likely to help you unlock the power of advanced proxy technology. However, we still have the problem of what protocol to use with your proxies.
Socks5 vs HTTP proxies
Simply put, internet protocol determines the rules of how devices communicate online. The choice of proxy protocol matters because it has an impact on the performance, security, and compatibility of your proxy server.
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is a default option for accessing websites as this protocol is what most internet browsers use. HTTPS is a more recent version of the HTTP protocol, adding a “secure” encryption layer.
SOCKS (or Socket Secure) involves an exchange of data packets through a proxy server, but not one that would hide identity. Instead, an additional proxy is used to store the cache and increase the performance.
SOCKS5 is the newest and most advanced iteration of the Socket Secure protocol. It has improved the old SOCKS version to handle voice and video as well as support authentification methods similar to HTTPS.
Previous versions of SOCKS, such as SOCKS4 or SOCKS3, weren’t recommended as proxies for privacy. With SOCKS5, the situation is changing, and SOCKS5 is clearly a winner in this comparison.
HTTPS can only browse web pages, albeit with great security measures. If you buy SOCKS5 proxy, you’ll have greater speed, equal security measures, and support for other protocols, such as FTP, TCP, UDP, IPV6, the same HTTPS, and others.
Wrapping up
We can conclude that unlocking the power of advanced proxy technology involves choosing an anonymous, private proxy that uses the SOCKS5 protocol. Coupled with the right proxy type, it will unlock great compatibility, speed, and security measures. It’s more than enough for the two main purposes of proxies.
